Whether working or relaxing, a growing proportion of the world's population spends prolonged periods in fixed, sedentary positions, with their vision and attention focused on a small portion of their environment. For example, office workers are required to work at computer terminals performing tasks such as word processing, data entry, and generating computer graphics. Students are regularly using computers for study and in the classroom. Computers and televisions are commonly viewed for entertainment and information purposes. These types of activities have unintended side effects such as eye fatigue, eye strain, difficulty focusing, headaches, backaches, and general muscular discomfort.
These and other symptoms are often the result of an improper arrangement of the sufferer's environment and his position and orientation within that environment. Often, steps the sufferer may take to alleviate one symptom may in turn cause other, perhaps more subtle, problems. For example, a video display terminal (VDT) user may position himself in a certain manner to avoid back discomfort, yet in so doing end up an improper distance from the VDT, as well as poorly oriented, thereby causing eye fatigue.
James E. Sheedy, in his U.S. Pat. No. 5,661,539, described what he termed a "Visual Tool for Assessing the Ergonomic Position of a Video Display Terminal." Sheedy's Visual Tool consists of a substantially planar measurement tool having a plurality of measurement indicia arranged to indicate the distance above and below a center point of the measurement tool. An alignment indicator, essentially a fabric tape measure, is attached to the center point and can be grasped by a user and extended outward. A VDT user may position the measurement tool over the face of the VDT and then determine a desired vertical orientation and distance from the face of the VDT by use of the Visual Tool. Hence Sheedy's Visual Tool provides the VDT user one manual device for determining his or her position and orientation in front of the VDT. Note, however, that the VDT use cannot simultaneously view the VDT while using Sheedy's Visual Tool.
What are needed are tools for providing a user dynamic visual feedback enabling the use to obtain a proper, ergonomic orientation with the computer work environment.